Sookdee gasped in terror as just above them a tiny tree owl called, “Whoo-whoo, whoo-whoo!” as if he jeered.  But Ajeet knew that that, in their belief, was a sign of encouragement, meaning not overmuch, but not an evil omen.  From far off floated up on the dead night air the belling note of a startled cheetal, and almost at once the harsh, grating, angry roar of a leopard, as though he had struck for the throat of the stag and missed.  These were but jungle voices, not in the curriculum of their pantheistic belief, so the Guru and the Bagrees sat in silence, and no one spoke.

Then, the night carried the faint trembling moan of a jackal, as the Guru knew, a female jackal, coming from a distance on the left.

“Oo-oo-oo-oo-oo!  Aye-aye! yi-yi-yi-yi!” the jackal wailed, the note rising to a fiendish crescendo; and then suddenly it hushed and there was only a ghastly silence in the jungle depths.

The white-clothed, ghost-like priest sprang to his feet, and with his lean left arm stretched high in suppliance, said:  “Bhowanee, thou hast vouchsafed to thy devotees the pilsao.  We will strew thy shrine with flowers and sweetmeats.”

He turned to the jamadars who had risen, saying, “Bhowanee is pleased; the suspicies are favourable; had the call of the jackal been from the right it would have been the tibao and we should have had to wait until the sweet goddess gave us another sign.  Now we may go back, and perhaps she will confirm this omen as we go.”

Hunsa, always possessed of a mean disposition, and still sulky over the encounter with Ajeet, was in an evil mood as they trudged through the jungle to their camp.  When Ajeet spoke of the priest’s success in his appeal, he snarled:  “The hangman always advises the one who is to have his neck stretched that he is better off dead.”

“What do you mean by that?” Ajeet queried.

“Just that you are not going on this mission, Ajeet;” then he laughed disagreeably.

“If you are afraid to go Sookdee will be well without you,” Ajeet retorted.

Before more could be said in this way, and as they approached the camp, the lowing of a cow was heard.

“Dost hear that, Guru?” Hunsa queried.  “In a decoity is not the lowing of a cow in a village held to be an evil omen?”

“Not so, Hunsa,” the Priest declared.  “It is an evil omen if the decoity is to be made on the village in which the cow raises her voice, but we are going to our own camp in peace, and it is a voice of approval.”

“As to that,” Ajeet commented, “if Hunsa is right, it is written in our code of omens that hearing a cow call thus simply means that one of the party making the decoity will be killed; perhaps as he was the one to notice it, the evil will fall upon him.”

“You’d like that,” Hunsa growled.

“Not being given to lies, it would not displease me, for, as the hangman said, you would be better dead.”